Wednesday, 5 April, 9.45 am.
Martha was motionless, as she had been since she had arrived at work that morning.
Hit by a sledgehammer of inactivity. She needed to remind herself: Erica Randall was not her responsibility. She needed to do her job. And so, in a determined mood, she picked up the file on Gina Marconi and read it through again, searching for some explanation.
She didn’t need to dwell on the injuries detailed by Mark Sullivan in the post-mortem. Multiple injuries were the inevitable consequence of a high-impact crash and no seat belt. She wanted to find answers and the only way would be to approach Gina’s mother, her son Terence, or Julius Zedanski. One of those would surely give her a clue.
She needed to formulate a plan. Some structure.
She would also visit the scene of the crash to at least get a clearer picture of the geography. It might help her to be more certain whether this had been premeditated or a spontaneous impulse. Crash scene investigators had estimated her speed had been around sixty miles per hour. Bloody fast to go flying into a wall, Martha muttered. She knew that road out of Shrewsbury and had braked round that very same corner. Going at sixty round that bend was suicidally fast. She’d had a narrow miss when she had hit a patch of black ice late one night when she had been driving home from a night out in Ellesmere. Even so, if Gina’s seat belt had been on she would almost certainly have survived the impact. Unbuckling her seat belt – or leaving it off – had surely been the clearest indication as to her intention. Unbuckling it had removed any chance she would survive.
Martha started by listing the indisputable facts: it had happened at three a.m. No witnesses.
Next, she leafed through the forensic report of the car.
Gina had, it seemed, driven straight and true. The damage to the car – and to the wall – had been symmetrical. There was no sign she had braked. There had been no brake pedal marks on the sole of her left foot. And Martha knew in high impact the brake pedal patterned the sole if the person had his or her foot on the brake pedal.
The only mark on Gina’s sole was on the right shoe, the clear imprint of the accelerator which had likewise mirrored the sole of the shoe. Everything pointed to suicide – except there had been no note and no indication that anything was wrong. In fact, the reverse was true. All the evidence and statements indicated Gina had been going through a happy period in her life.
Martha was thoughtful and disturbed. Before finding the verdict she needed to satisfy herself that this had been a deliberate suicide. And she realized that meant asking twin questions. Not only why, but also why not? Not just why a beautiful and talented woman with a future ahead of her wanted to kill herself, but why had she not left her nearest and dearest some explanation? Why leave them to forever wonder and suffer?
Gina had been a barrister – a profession that articulated actions in terms clear enough to convince a judge and jury. This obfuscation just didn’t fit, which meant she should consider an alternative. Was there the remotest possibility that she had been unable to sleep, had been heading somewhere, ended up impacting the wall by accident? As coroner, this was Martha’s job. Her decision. Could she honestly find an accidental verdict? Duck the issue by finding the death unexplained? All her instincts screamed at suicide and yet she would not find that verdict unless … She could not be a hundred per cent sure without that note, without some stark reason, some benefit, some sign that Gina’s Teflon life was not quite as it seemed. She needed to find that ‘not quite’. Was it possible that, unable to sleep, perhaps fizzed up at the thought of her impending wedding, she had by some godawful chance found herself fatally distracted and bang? So why no seat belt? Was it possible her distraction had extended to that? It was all most unsatisfactory.
She picked up yet another report. Toxicology. Gina’s blood alcohol level was 10 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood – less than the equivalent of one small glass of wine. Well under the legal limit. Hardly pissed. ‘Don’t tell me that would have impaired her judgement,’ Martha muttered, her mind taking an unexpected left turn. It wouldn’t even have softened the impact. She had not taken the cowards’ way out, anaesthetizing herself first with a bottle of whisky, but had suffered the full impact. Punishing herself, leaving no way out. She had left her mobile phone at home, carefully placed on the bedside table. Martha needed to be sure and Gina wasn’t helping her. She took a look at the photograph and recalled the laugh she had heard ringing that night.
She read through the police description of the scene. One hundred feet behind the wall was a neat and symmetrical Georgian house. The owner slept in a front bedroom and had heard the impact, felt a shudder in the house, heard the bang, the crashing of glass, the tearing of metal, the dreadful sound of violent impact, the sound of death. No scream. Though he must have realized this was a catastrophic impact, he had initially peered through the curtains and, when he’d seen the carnage, had wasted no time in dialling 999. The ambulance had arrived first to a dead woman trapped half in and half out of a crushed car, radiator steam still puffing out, headlights angled into the night sky. The fire engine had arrived with cutting equipment and then, with the police, had removed the body straight into a body bag. There was no need for a police surgeon to confirm death. These days a senior policeman could do it just as well.
The scene had been sealed off and the wheels of forensic investigation began.
She sighed and returned to her train of thought. Leaving her phone behind meant no Where are you? phone call or text, as well as no fatal distraction. But no phone could also mean something else: no chance for a last-minute funk or goodbye message. More than ever Martha wished Alex was here, by her side, so they could comb through the facts together as they usually did and try and come up with some rational explanation. Having someone to test her ideas on, bounce around various scenarios, had been more useful than she had realized. Truth was, she was missing him.
It was strange to think that only a few days ago he had been here, in this room, so familiar with its beige carpet, cream walls, bookshelves. Her eyes drifted towards the bay window and the armchairs close to them. He had been sitting in that very chair, long bony frame, legs stretched out in front of him, that familiar frown as he tried to work something out, that particular mixture he held of angst and relaxation, of reassurance and provoking questions, at the same time asking and answering them. It was he who had coloured in the picture made from observation at the scene, that Gina had initially gone to bed that night. His theory was that she had made the decision only minutes before she had left the house.
And yet she must have staked out the spot.
It had been Alex who had further painted the picture of her bedroom. The covers had been thrown back, the phone placed squarely on the bedside cabinet (a mark of determination), but the nightdress tossed on the bed. He had accompanied this comment with a sly glance at her. ‘An expensive garment,’ he’d said, and when he’d noticed the curse of the redhead – a deep blush on her cheeks – he had described it further. ‘Purple satin trimmed with real lace.’
She had made the only response she could. ‘Really?’
Which had provoked a wide grin quickly smothered.
He had gone on to describe the contrast in Gina’s heavily bloodstained apparel. ‘Jogging bottoms and a sweatshirt with trainers. No socks, no knickers, no bra.’ And the hint of boudoir had been blown away. They were clothes one would pull on hurriedly if unable to sleep, clothes you would wear to creep out of your house, leaving your eight-year-old son asleep, your mother safe in her bungalow and leave the house to kill yourself. So, DI Randall had surmised, and she had agreed with him, Gina had gone to bed and been unable to sleep. Troubled by thoughts, perhaps? She had come to a decision and then, agitated, she had got up, dressed and left the house, apparently without leaving a suicide note.
Martha had interjected then. ‘Only one in six suicides do leave a note, Alex.’
But both had come to the same conclusion – that Gina Marconi was a lawyer. She would have wanted to leave things neat and tidy.
Or perhaps that was the subtlety of a lawyer’s mind. Leave them wondering, why don’t you? Martha started to plan. She had some ideas.
She wanted to interview Bridget Shannon again and, with her permission, Terence. But she had to be realistic. If Gina’s mother had known nothing, what did she think an eight-year-old could possibly know? Was she inferring Terence was more perceptive than his grandmother? Maybe. It was not impossible. Sometimes children are. Sometimes they see things others do not. Sometimes they blurt out statements or observations that adults would hide.
Martha frowned. To have any insight into this case she needed to escape her office and visit the scene of the crash, preferably with a police escort. That brought her up short. Admit it, Martha, you’re really missing him. You want to know how Alex is.
She stood up, tossed the papers aside, picked up the phone, connected with Monkmoor Police Station and asked if someone could drive her out to the crash site.